


Where Angels Fear To Tread

by unscriptedemily



Category: Fullmetal Alchemist - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe - Dystopia, Alternate Universe - Post-Apocalypse, Alternate Universe - Vampire, Angst, Blood Drinking, Canon-Typical Violence, Don't answer that, Fire, Fluff, Gratuitous Violence, M/M, Mild Gore, Self-Harm, Sleep Deprivation, Theres always angst, Vampires, brought to you two months later than it was supposed to be by yours truly, it's??? kind of self harm, of course, sort of, that's right kids it's the incredibly late halloween-themed vampire au, what does that say about me as a person, what im trying to say is that there is potentially triggering material, why is there always so much violence in my fics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-10
Updated: 2015-12-10
Packaged: 2018-05-05 22:02:16
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 18,633
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5391935
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unscriptedemily/pseuds/unscriptedemily
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Ed stills, gazing out of the smashed window with narrowed eyes, absentmindedly stepping around the glass littering the floor under the sill. He leans on the edge of the window frame, hair blowing in the wind, and Roy’s gaze is drawn to the strong muscles shifting under his skin at his back. Ed turns, and Roy thinks about kissing him, touching him, drawing him closer and protecting him.<br/>Like he needs protecting. Like Roy even has a <i>chance</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Where Angels Fear To Tread

**Author's Note:**

> This was originally meant to be like a oneshot for halloween, but then it turned into 18k of pure awfulness and ????? here it is??? in all it's glory ??? (???????????)  
> UH.  
> Anyway, since my fics usually end up being all angsty and terrible and Deep, there's some content that could be potentially triggering!! i'll put it here so you guys can decide for yourselves if you want to read it- please, please don't feel like you have to read it or something if anything makes you uncomfortable!!!!  
> Here we go:  
> -self harm (sort of. it's basically self harm & my friend advised me to mention it here, so im following that advice)  
> -the whole vampire/biting/blood thing...yeah  
> -mentions of/ the intention to commit suicide  
> -fighting (like, my usual kind of fighting, which is a lot of emotive language and some swearing and a bunch of sentences that end with hyphens. shit like that)  
> -guns & knives
> 
> i think that's it!! if there's anything else people see in the fic that they would like to be mentioned, please tell me and i'll do it straight away.  
> Apart from that, im just gonna thank Fee real quickly for putting up with all my shit <333 ur the best, homeslice.  
> And now i shall go down a few cups of incredibly strong coffee and hope that it keeps me awake lmao

 

The day Roy Mustang met Edward Elric started off as, arguably, the worst day he’d had since joining the much-revered Extermination Unit. It was raining, for starters, the kind of heavy, grey rain that permeates everything with a dull air of exhaustion no matter how many heavy-duty umbrellas you have. Also, Roy was hungover.

 _I knew it was a bad idea to let Maes drag me to the bar yesterday_.

“We’ll start off by searching the premises,” Roy said, shoulders hunched as raindrops did their best to worm their way down the back of his neck. This weather was determined to make him miserable. His squad looked at him, equally gloomy- all except Havoc, who stared forlornly at his drenched cigarette, instead.  
 “If you meet one of Them, only engage if you have to.” He was only reciting from the textbook, now. They knew this. They knew the rules. He sighed, tugging his collar closer to his neck. “Just- try not to die. Alright?”

They nodded, drawing their weapons- guns filled with salt bullets, jagged knives that look more like machetes, heavy flashlights that double as truncheons- and turned to face the building they were supposed to be purifying.

‘Purifying’ meaning ‘killing everything that moves and burning the bodies’, of course.

It was some old abandoned apartment block; local residents had reported flickering lights in windows and weird noises that could potentially be muffled screams.

Just looking at it, the place screamed ‘vampire’. It was the perfect hideout for a creature on the run from the Exterminators; set in the middle of a crowded city, it didn’t stand out too much- after the plague, plenty of buildings like this had become abandoned after their tenants turned into bloodthirsty monsters- and there were enough people for hunting to be easy if not risk-free.

“Move out, then,” said Roy, and they entered, splitting up at the bottom of the stairwell. Roy took to the top floor, boots crunching a little on the broken glass littering the worn carpet. He wasn’t stupid enough to take the elevator, so he was a little out of breath by the time he reached the top.

He stepped out of the stairwell, into the hallway, and immediately, he knew.

(He doesn’t know what it is; some kind of sixth sense, that lets him sense Them, but he can _always_ tell.)  
 Briefly, he considered calling Riza for backup, but from the information they’d gathered, it’s just one of Them, and weakened, by the sounds of it- there hadn’t been much activity that suggested it was going hunting for live prey, and Roy knew from his studies that vampires need fresh blood to keep them going.

Plus, a promotion was always on the cards, and the more of Them you take down solo, the better it looks on your record.

He crunches his way into the hall and towards the room at the very end, guided by what Maes likes to call his ‘vamp radar’. Roy prefers to think of it as a keen spacial awareness. The lights are dim, flickering with feverish intensity that makes his head hurt. Wincing, Roy checks his gun. He’s far too hungover for this. If Riza was here, she’d scold him. Or maybe just _look_ at him; that was worse, because Riza’s _looks_ consisted of levels of disappointment that Roy _can’t_ cope with this early in the morning with _this_ much of a tequila headache-

The door swings open with a creak that belongs in a low budget horror movie, and Roy is immediately assaulted by a god-awful stench that, grimly, Roy has become more than accustomed to. Dead bodies.  
He levels his gun at the room, breathing through his mouth, and stares around in disgust. A pile of dismembered limbs- pale, bloodless, grotesque-  greet him; they form a shadowy, oddly shaped hill in this dim lighting: the gore-splattered curtains are drawn tightly. Only a thin shaft of light filters in through the filmy material.

He takes a single, measured step forwards, and the vampire springs.  
Roy ducks, fired off three shots as he sidesteps, door clicking shut behind him; there’s a sharp snarl as the bullets hit their mark. Roy backs up a little, reloading. The vampire is a groaning, hissing tangle of limbs and slowly-seeping blood on the floor. He raises the gun again, aiming carefully for its head. He pulls the trigger, and-

Pain, bright and savage, scored in a line slashed deep down his back, he trips, turns, falls, cursing himself; the vampire behind him laughs. _Shit_ \- Roy’s more hungover than he thought; forgetting the simplest rule in the goddamn book: _always check behind you_. The vampire leans down, smiling, pulling a knife from its boot, and when Roy tried to get up, it kicks him in the ribs, in the guts. He collapses, gasping for air, and the vampire hunkers down, raising the knife. 

He’s going to die, Roy realises, and not even in the middle of a valiant battle against twenty-odd foe or anything heroic. He’s going to die, half-raised on his elbows, staring down a knife, on the grimy floor of a grimy apartment block in the grimiest city in the country.  
  
 Well, shit.

 

It’s just a blur of metal, no words wasted, and Roy shuts his eyes, at the last second deciding he doesn’t want to see his blood spill across the floor, thank you very much-

Opens them immediately after because the weight pressing down on him is very suddenly gone.

Someone had pulled the vampire off of him. It’s too dark to see clearly, but what he _can_ make out is the flick of bright gold hair- his first thought is _Riza!-_ and the voice, low and flushed right through with anger, which says very  loudly, “take that, you piece of shit!”

The walls rattle, peeling paint dropping to the stained carpet in little worm-like curls as the vampire is slammed against a kitchen counter; Roy scrambles to his feet, snatching up his gun from the floor, and the vampire he’d shot drags itself up on all fours to spit blood onto the worn carpet. Its wounds are healing, Roy realises, flesh closing over the bullet wounds. A few metres away, the newcomer kicks the vampire in the head- displaying impressive flexibility- and follows up with punch that makes the vampire howl.

Roy realises he’d been distracted a second too late; the vampire was on him and he twists to free the gun, fires blindly-

Warm blood soaked into him and he inadvertently takes in a deep breath, coughs, the stink of the corpses almost overpowering. The vampire on top of him goes limp. He heaves it off, the body rolling to the side like a marionette with its strings cut, and stumbles to his feet, notes the bullet wound gaping in its forehead. Good shot, he thinks numbly.

There is a sickening _shunk_ sound and Roy looks up to see the blonde guy pulling a knife out of the other vampire’s stomach and tossing it onto the floor. The vampire crumples into a heap, blood oozing from-

From, yes, the stab wound, but also from its neck.

Roy’s saviour turns, and in the half-light, Roy sees the blood staining his mouth, dribbling down his chin.

He raises his gun.

“Don’t bother,” says the figure, wiping his mouth with the sleeve of his hoodie. “You’re out of bullets. Also, salt- of any kind- doesn’t really do anything against vampires except, like, _sting_ a bit. We’re not fucking mythical creatures, you know. We don’t explode if we go out into sunlight, and you can get _much_ better quality bullets if you just use normal ones.” He moves to the window, puts his foot on the ledge, glances back. “Just for future reference.”

Slowly, and against all of his better judgement, Roy puts the gun back in its holster. “I’ll keep it in mind,” he says. Then, “why did you save me?”

The figure- and now that he’s moved into the light Roy can see that it’s _not_ just a figure; it’s a young man; blond hair scooped into a ponytail, scuffed combat boots and ripped black jeans and, not that Roy cares, really quite startlingly attractive: he’s like a vampire straight out of a teenage romance novel-  hesitates, halfway out of the window.  
  
 “Not all of us are monsters,” he says finally, and a note of disgust enters his voice. “Not that you would know that, seeing as how you and your Extermination Unit go around killing everything that fucking _moves_. Maybe you should think how _we_ feel next time you burst into some poor innocent bastard’s house and start shooting.”

He shakes his head, and the light reflected off of his hair makes him look like he’s wearing a halo. Like some kind of avenging angel, which is the opposite of what his kind were. “Fuck. Anyway. I saved your ass because you were about to get shanked, you idiot. These guys have been leeching off of the citizens for, like, a month. Thought someone should do something about that shit, since _you_ weren’t.”

He puts grips the window frame, preparing to, presumably, turn into a bat and fly away, or something, and Roy starts forwards.

“Wait-,” he says, and the vampire pauses, raises a sardonic eyebrow at him.

“So your backup team can burst in and _shoot_ me? I don’t think so.”

“What’s your name?” Roy blurts out, because _yes_ , goddamn it, he may be stalling, but now he’s actually curious, too-

The vampire looks at him for one long moment. “Ed,” he says, finally, and performs a mocking salute- quite an achievement, considering he’s still leaning half in and half out of the window. “Ciao, Squadron Leader.”

And then he jumps out of the window without a backwards glance just as Riza and Havoc kicked open the door, aiming their guns into the room.

“Sir! Are you hurt?”

Roy -shook his head. “No, I’m fine.” As he turns to look at them he remembers his back, and winces. Shit, that twinges.  “Actually, I think I was clawed or…something.”

“We heard shouting.”

He gestured to the two dead vampires. “I was fighting. Turns out there were two, not one.”

“Why didn’t you call for backup?” Riza is inspecting his torn jacket, tugging at the wound. Roy makes a face. “It’s not deep. We need to get you to the hospital, put some antibiotics on it.”

“Right.”

As Roy follows them out of the room, he can’t help glancing back. He thinks he might- _might_ \- have seen a flash of gold at the edge of the window, but he dismisses it as one of the curtains moving in the breeze. After all, any sensible vampire would be long gone by now.

 _“Not all of us are monsters_.”  
  
 It’s funny, Roy’s never even entertained the idea that some vampires may not actually be as bad as they’re made out to be. He remembers the long golden hair, the lean form, the arms, muscled beneath deep red sleeves. He remembers blood, smeared over the creature’s mouth. Vampire blood. Not his own.

Ed. Roy swallows, the name reverberating at the back of his throat, heavy on his tongue.

***

The second time Roy meets Edward Elric, the situation is actually fairly similar.

 As before, he’s alone on a mission. An authorised solo one this time- although Roy certainly earned major credit for that last, technically-against-the-rules one. The Director himself even came to congratulate him personally- since the Unit wants to evaluate the squadron leaders’ abilities. They’ve sent each of them out on individual missions to- well, Roy supposes, to see if they die or not. He’s fairly confident in his abilities tonight- especially since he’s replaced his rocksalt bullets with normal ones that, both according to the mysterious vampire and his own research, pack much more of a punch.

He finishes the job- a couple of newly Turned on a killing spree in the suburbs- without any trouble. It’s only when he’s cleaning the blood off his weapons that his real problems start.

 

It’s a rush of cold air overhead that alerts him to their presence: five of them, mature, bloodthirsty, and, strangely, unconcerned with him. Roy presses his back against the freezing alley bricks and peers upwards, gun at the ready; they’re perched on a fire escape a few floors above him, faces turned away from him, towards the east, scenting the air.

“That way,” says one of them, pointing. It leans forwards, smiling jaggedly into the wind, and even from this distance, Roy can see the feverish gleam in its eyes. The others nod, shifting into crouching positions.

“Go, Envy,” one says, dark hair whipping out behind it, while another one wipes the back of its hand across its mouth, slavering.

“Are we going to eat him?” it asks, voice high pitched and trembling with excitement.

“You’re drooling, Gluttony,” says the dark haired one, bored. “And yes. He’s killed enough of us. It’s about time we get our revenge.” She smiles thinly, her profile stark against the darkening sky.

“He calls himself a _vampire_ ,” sneers the first one, muscles tightening in readiness to spring, “we’ll show him.”

Without a glance at Roy, they push off from the fire escape, leaping across rooftops and slowly, Roy’s grip on his gun slackens.

 _He calls himself a vampire_.

Roy shakes his head. Whether or not the vampires are planning on committing cannibalism or not, it doesn’t particularly matter to him- what matters is that here are five of Them running around unchecked, and it’s his job to take them down before they can harm a human.

Keeping his eyes on the horizon, where their silhouettes are still visible, Roy takes off running, out of the alleyway and over the bloodsoaked bodies of the vampires he’d been sent to dispatch. He’s gunning the engine, pressing his foot down on the accelerator and sending thanks to the new curfew- the streets are empty apart from the vampire extermination squad, so he doesn’t have to worry about careless driving.

The car flashes through the streets, tires spraying puddle water onto the pavement as he speeds over the road, one eye fixed on the rooftops as he pulls out his phone, dialling headquarters. It’s Riza who picks up; he gives her the overview, tells her to track his location and send the cleanup team to the alleyway.

“When I’ve got a fix on them, I’ll call for backup,” he says, scanning over the empty roofs. Where did they go? “I’m trying to find them now. They headed east- wait. I see them.”

Five of them, heading straight for an apartment block sticking up out of the city like a sore, smoke-stained thumb; they run lightly over a bakery and disappear on the other side. Roy’s still five minutes away by car.

“ _Do you have a location for them, sir?”_

“I think they’re heading for one of the apartment blocks off Charles Road,” he tells her, “I’m going in.”

 _“Sir, you should wait for backup.”_ Her tone is stern, but Roy knows, with a sudden thrum of adrenaline through his system, that he’s never going to get a chance like this again.

“I’m not putting lives at risk any more than I need to, Lieutenant,” he says, “I’ve taken out more before. There’s no need to send backup for something I can handle alone. Although- I would appreciate it if you could send me the building plan.”

 _And this is the perfect chance for me to prove to the Commander that I should be promoted_ , he thinks; he doesn’t have to say anything out loud. Riza always knows.

“ _…Very well, Sir. I’m sending a team to stay on guard outside. Just in case.”_ Her tone tells Roy that there’s no point arguing- he purses his lips, but he has nothing to gain from an argument, and he’s losing time.

“Thank you, Lieutenant.”

 

 

 

He parks outside, rifling through the glovebox to find his extra ammunition- no harm in going in prepared. As he’s sliding another knife into the sheath at his hip, a glint above him makes him look up; he sees a window swing ajar on the top floor, and- there they are. They slip through it like smoke, clinging to the grey brickwork of the apartment block like spiders and climbing through the window with the unnatural grace that never fails to turn Roy’s stomach. His grip tightens on his gun. He gets out of the car.  
A spray of illegible graffiti scrawls across the front of the building; one of the ground floor windows is half shattered, so Roy finishes the job with his flashlight-turned-battering-ram wrapped in his jacket. Climbing through the window, he lands lightly on the ground floor. It’s quiet, eerily so.  
He shakes out his jacket, broken glass falling to land like snowflakes- albeit shard, glittery ones- at his feet, and he puts it back on, grateful for the extra security the armoured cloth gives him.  
_Not that it was much help late time_ , Roy thinks, remembering the smooth slice of the vampire’s claws straight through the material and into his skin like a knife through butter, and he narrows his eyes. Well, then. He’ll just have to ensure They don’t have a chance to claw him.

 

The lights are off in the stairwell.

In fact, the lights are off _everywhere_ ; he’s thankful that by the time he reaches the top floor, his eyes have had time to get used to the dark, because he would _not_ enjoy fighting vampires without being able to see. Quietly, he checks his gun is loaded, checks the safety’s off, and, satisfied, moves forwards into the shadowy hallway.

Judging by the building plan Riza sent him and the position of the window outside, the vampires entered through the last door, at the end of the hallway. It’s closed; no light shines out from underneath it. Roy moves towards it silently, keeping his gun in front of him, and barely manages to stop himself jumping out of his damn skin when the door rattles as if something has careened into it at full force.  
There’s a faint snarl, and the sound of something smashing.  
Roy swallows. Definitely the right room, then.

 

Taking a breath, he goes in gun first, kicking open the door and firing blindly into the darkness; there’s a howl of pain and he smiles grimly as a bullet finds its target; a dark figure launches itself into him and he fires again, ducking under the swipe of outstretched claws. Clean. Smooth. He knows this drill; he’s done it hundreds, thousands of times before. Roy catches a glimpse of a wide, gaping mouth filled with fangs before he fires again, and the vampire hits the opposite wall and lies still.  
Roy looks up, and the one in the dress is coming at him; she’s so fast Roy barely ducks in time. One of her claws catches his shoulder; another rips into his cheek. Throwing knives has always been Maes’ speciality, but Roy thanks his lucky stars that he asked for lessons; he yanks the knife from his belt just in time; it sinks into the vampire’s chest with a sickening _thunk_. The vampire stumbles backwards, pulling out the knife with a wince.  
Excellent. Now she’s an _armed_ angry vampire trying to kill him.

The one on the floor stumbles upright, spitting blood, and they both attack simultaneously. Roy is knocked backwards into the wall; with one hand he grabs the wrist of the one in the dress; her claws flash _dangerously_ close to his eyes and he moves, twisting and executing a perfect judo throw over his hip. Apparently martial arts courses _do_ pay off. And so does having extra ammunition; as the other one snarls and slashes, Roy reloads the gun, sidestepping, barely avoiding a lethal claw embedding itself in his neck; he fires and at point blank range the damage is almost certainly fatal.

The vampire hits the floor, twitches, and lies still. Roy looks up, and across the room, a man with long blonde hair and distractingly golden eyes meets his eyes.

_Ed._

There is a moment of utter silence, where Roy struggles for words and Ed struggles for breath- and then another vampire is hurtling towards him through the darkness and h’s moving on autopilot again, shooting, dodging, striking, reloading; repeating.

Somewhere amidst the stabbing and the shooting and the trying desperately not to die as vampire upin vampire- how many _are_ there? Are these the same ones he’s been supposedly killing for the past however-long-they’ve-been-doing-this? - Ed cries out, a muffled curse, a half-choked noise of pure fury mixed in with pain, and Roy, aching, covered in blood and gunk and god _knows_ what else, jerks his head up on reflex.

A vampire- the one Roy shot first, the one who, apparently, has dragged itself from the floor to stand, caked in drying blood but otherwise healed- has its hands around Ed’s throat, lifting him and slamming him bodily into the wall. Ed kicks out, catching the vampire in the arm, the chest, spitting curses through the claws clamped around his neck; Roy notes that an advantage of being a vampire seems to be that Ed’s skin is marginally tougher than Roy’s jacket and is so far withstanding the claws pressing in at his windpipe.

There are snarls in the darkness and the vampire holding Ed- who is _also_ a vampire, Roy tells himself furiously; he shouldn’t feel so damn _invested_. What does he care if Ed lives or dies?- is saying something, laughing, and Ed’s eyes are burning slits of unremitting anger, and there’s blood on the floor and splashed across the walls; the smell of it is cloying and thick and suffocating, and Roy is aware of three things shining at him through the dark: eyes, claws, and teeth.

His gun, somehow, is in his hand, warm familiar grip and he knows the drill; Roy pulls the trigger: once, twice, three times.

Blood sprays across the wall and the eyes, feral and hungry and dark without a hint of gold, flash in the shadows; a snarl rends the air around him and there’s a smashing sound as the other window breaks, shatters, fragments cascading across the stained carpet like diamonds- three vampires lunge through it, smearing the glass red and leaving two still bodies in their wake.

For a moment, all he can do is stand there, blood dripping into his eyes, unable to breathe, unable to move.

He is frozen with the gun still pointed out of the window. The only sound is his own heartbeat.

Then Ed coughs, a guttural, choked-up sound, and hits the floor with a thud. Roy’s feet move of their own accord, bringing him across the room to kneel beside him, reaching out only to pull up short, hands hovering in the air twenty centimetres away- _vampire_.

“Are you alright?” he asks, cautiously, and Ed’s eyes open a crack, thin slivers of gold in the darkness, to give Roy the most withering glare he’s ever received.

“Yeah,” says Ed in a voice made entirely of pain, “Fuckin’ peachy.”

His skin is so pale, it glows. His cheekbones stick out unnaturally beneath his skin; he’s too thin, too…underfed. He’s starving himself, Roy realises, as Ed’s eyes close again and he slumps backwards, breathing strained. Either that, or he’s just a really bad hunter- but from what Roy’s seen of his skill, he finds that incredibly unlikely.

“Fuck,” Ed mutters. Roy looks at him then, really looks at him. The barest points of his fangs are poking at the skin of his barely-parted lips, his hair fall down his back in a river of spun-gold- at some point it came loose from his ponytail and the hair tie is lying in a shallow pool of blood beside them. The shadows under his eyes are bruise-coloured and dark.  
Roy remembers learning in the training academy that vampires don’t sleep; can’t sleep. That they have to drink blood to keep themselves going or their bodies shut down from the sheer exhaustion. That, or they go ‘berserk’ and start killing people left right and centre.

Ed doesn’t look berserk, but he doesn’t look healthy either.

Roy closes the distance between them without thinking, leaning forwards to brush Ed’s cheek with his fingertips, and Ed jerks away from him with a snarl, kicking out with a sudden burst of savagery that takes Roy’s breath away- literally. He would retaliate, if he wasn’t preoccupied with being kicked so hard he skids across the floor and hits the couch, winded.

He fumbles for the gun, but Ed’s not moving anymore; he’s breathing hard, limp, head hanging down, hair slipping over his shoulders.

“Don’t,” he says, voice low. “Don’t- come near me. You should leave.”

His voice is quiet, weak: evidently, the sudden display of strength took its toll on him. Slowly, Roy gets to his feet. “Why?”

“Why the fuck do you _think_?” Ed snarls, fists clenching, and when he looks up through the sheet of his bangs his eyes are burning. Burning with hunger. Oh.

“You…”

“ _Go_ ,” says Ed, fists tightening even more; knuckles white. “It- it’s taking _all_ of my fucking willpower not to fucking jump you and _eat_ you, you fucking idiot; _get out of here_.”

His voice cracks, and if Roy was a different man, maybe he would have listened. Maybe.

Instead, he crosses the room again; Ed flinches. When Roy sinks to his knees in front of him, Ed tilts his head back- and _moans_.

“You- fucking- _go_ ,” Ed says, fangs glinting, the bare column of his throat alabaster pale; “I can’t-,”

“Do it,” Roy says, “You’re killing yourself by going without, aren’t you?”

“ _Leave_ ,” Ed hisses, and Roy’s eyes narrow.

“How long has it been since you last drank?” _From a human_ , he doesn’t add; Ed seems to hear it, unspoken, anyway.  He moans again, breathing in sharply.

“Fuck- I don’t know, three weeks, give or- take-,”

 _Three weeks_. The teachers at the academy told them that the longest a vampire could go without blood was three _days_.

“Ed,” Roy snaps, “You’re dying.”

“ _I know_ ,” says Ed, drawing his knees up in a sudden, graceful movement; he presses his forehead into his knees. “You- fucking hell, I _know_. You’re a fucking exterminator, why can’t you just leave me to die? This is what you _want_ , isn’t it?” He coughs again, shoulders shaking.

Roy doesn’t know what he wants, but it sure as hell isn’t _this_.

“No,” he says, “I- No. You saved my life. The least I can do is return the favour.”

Ed doesn’t reply. He’s stopped moving. Very slowly, his fists unclench, hands limp at his sides. Four bloody crescent moons on each of his palms where his nails sliced into them.

“Ed?” Roy asks, and he doesn’t make a sound. Oh, hell. Is he _dead_? Roy reaches over, taking Ed’s chin gingerly in his hand, tilting his head back to rest against the wall again. His eyes are closed. His hair slips over his face. “Shit. Ed.”

Roy picks up one of the shards of glass from the floor, pressing the point of it to his wrist. Wincing, he drags it across his skin, opening a thin red line. Blood wells up, and he presses his arm to Ed’s mouth. Red droplets run over Ed’s lips and curve towards his jaw.

Fuck. Oh, fuck; he can’t be _dead_ , can he?

 _Why do you care_?

That’s a good question. Roy doesn’t know why he cares, but he knows, for some bizarre fucking reason, that he _does_. And that he’s kneeling here, in the freezing air of a run-down apartment, bleeding into a vampire’s mouth in an effort to keep him alive.

Then- a sharp pain in his wrist, and he almost jerks away before he realises- Ed’s fangs. He’s _alive_. Alive, and biting him. Drinking his _blood_ , eyes still closed, but colour slowly returning to his face, and is it just Roy, or has everything started going a little fuzzy around the edges?

And then he has a split second to consider the consequences of letting a vampire sink its probably extremely toxic fangs into him, before his vision blurs and he hits the ground.

 

When he wakes up, he’s lying on the couch, red coat draped over him like a blanket, and Ed is standing over him. His lips are very, very red.

“Am I dead?” Roy asks, because it seems like a fair question to ask (never mind the fact that his first thought was _is this heaven_ when really, it should have been _is this hell_ \- Ed is a monster, after all); Ed’s eyes widen, then narrow, and then he laughs, relief flooding his face before he turns away, hiding his expression.

“No,” he says, “Although you fuckin’ well should be.”

“What- happened?” he asks, sitting up. His head throbs. He looks down, and his wrist is bandaged.

Ed shifts uncomfortably above him. “I, uh- drank some of your blood. Only some,” he adds hastily, “But it kind of made you pass out. Sorry.”

Roy stares at him, for a long moment.

“You’re _apologising_?” he asks, finally, and Ed scowls and looks away; Roy notices that the two dead- or, as is more likely, almost-dead vampires previously lying crumpled on Ed’s floor are gone. He wonders what Ed did with them.

“Shut the fuck up. I shouldn’t have-,”

“I _wanted_ you to-,”

“-could’ve _died_ -,”

“I voluntarily made you drink my blood-,”

Ed whips round again, and his eyes are burning with fury. “And you _shouldn’t have,_ ” he says, and Roy a single shining moment Roy sees into the very depths of him; past his anger there is a very real _fear_ in his eyes, and raw, wretched _guilt_. “You should’ve let me _die_ ,” he whispers, turning away, and Roy swings his legs over the side of the couch, standing up.

Bad idea; his head spins for a second and he steadies himself on the arm of the couch, but he’s determined, and he takes a step forward, taking hold of Ed’s arm. Ed flinches, but doesn’t pull away.

“Ed,” says Roy, “need I remind you again that you _saved_ my _life_? I wasn’t just going to sit there and watch you _die_.”

Ed takes a slow, deep breath.

“I don’t get you, he says, “I’m a _vampire_. One of the monsters that _you’re_ meant to kill.”

Roy frowns. He’s still holding Ed’s arm.

“You may be a vampire,” he says, “but you’re not a monster. And technically, I’m only supposed to kill vampires that have killed people.”

“Bullshit,” Ed snorts, turning to look at him again, “you Exterminators don’t give a _fuck_ about whether or not vampires kill people. You just fucking hate them- and for good fucking reason! I could have _killed_ you! Do you have any idea how hard it was to stop myself before I drained you dry? _Really fucking hard_!”

His cheekbones are no longer so gaunt, so sickly; his eyes are no longer dull, they’re fiery, shining, _angry_. Mesmerising. The shadows under his eyes aren’t so deep, now; they’re still dark and less-than-healthy, yes, but Ed no longer resembles a living skeleton, so that’s something.

Again, Roy finds himself unable to get away from the fact that Ed is really, really quite attractive.

He realises that Ed’s staring at him, one eyebrow raised waiting for a retort. He clears his throat.

“You didn’t though,” he says, “you held back. You’re stronger than _this_ , Ed.” He motions to the room around them; smashed glass and blood splatters on the walls. Ed licks his lips.

“You don’t know anything, Roy Mustang,” he says quietly, and there’s something in his eyes that makes him, all at once, seem indescribably old and weary. Also, how the hell does Ed know his name? Before he can ask, though, Ed is pulling away from him effortlessly, and pointing at the door. “Go. Your friends are outside.”

Shit. Riza. Roy checks his phone, miraculously unharmed after the fight; he has three missed calls. _Shit_.

“Ah.” Boots crunching over the broken glass, he turns back when he reaches the door. Ed is standing with his back to Roy, silhouetted against the darkening sky, hair rustling with the rush of cold air; Roy has never seen anything more beautiful. “I’m not going to tell anyone about you,” he says, and he doesn’t know if Ed even _cares_ , if he even wants the reassurance- but he has to say _something_ and he doesn’t know what else there is to say-, “I’ll come back tomorrow. To see-,” Y _ou,_ “- how you’re doing.”

Ed laughs humourlessly. “See you around, Mustang.”

 

 

***

 

The door closes behind Roy, and Ed lets out the breath he’s been holding for the past few minutes. (All that bullshit about vampires not being able to breathe? Yeah, not true. Ed should know. It was one of the first fucking things he tested when he was Turned.)  
With Roy gone, it’s safe to breathe again, safe to smell. _God_. The man doesn’t know how fucking intoxicating he smells, how intoxicating he _tastes_. Stopping himself from drinking it all was the hardest thing Ed’s ever done, and considering how much shit he’s been through, that means it was _pretty fucking hard_.  
He licks his lips again. Roy’s blood was the most heady thing he’s ever tasted; better than any drug. Better than anything. Was this what drinking human blood felt like _all the time_? No fuckin’ wonder those crazy vampires refused to quit.

The apartment looks like a bomb just hit it, and he still has to deal with the two hald-dead vampires he’s got tied up in the closet, but that’s not Ed’s main concern at the moment. Those vampires that broke in and attacked him- first of all, he’s gonna track them down and _kill them_ , and second of all, who the fuck _were_ they? It’s bad enough being hunted by the Exterminators; being hunted by other vampires too is just _typical_.

Ed guesses it probably has something to do with the fact that he keeps fighting, killing and draining their kind.

His kind. Whatever.

To be fair, it’s not like he has a fucking choice; he’s not about to start hunting _humans_ , and those vampires were killers. Berserk, he’s heard them called. He drags a hand through his hair, glancing at his stack of research notes- he’d been looking through them when he’d caught scent of the five assholes heading his way, and now they’re all bloodstained and scattered.  
For months he’s been recording everything he learns about vampires; there’s a kind of hierarchy even within this shitty society they’ve built for themselves, and as one of the ones who _doesn’t_ kill humans, he’s the lowest of the low. Makes finding information difficult.  
  
 Difficult, but not impossible. He’s built up some reliable sources over the past month or so, but there’s still _so much_. He’s still so far from- from what? From finding a way to reverse the Turning? From finding a way to die, for sure? He breathes out. Al will kill him if he dies, Ed _knows_ that- but it doesn’t stop him from searching for a way. He’s tried starving himself. It probably would’ve fucking _worked_ , too, depending on whether or not he would’ve been able to resist the cravings for long enough.

Still, he should write it down in his notes. Starving yourself: definitely a possibility.  
  
 He can smell Roy, still, faint; he’s heading out of the building. Ed listens to him placating his team members, listens to the sharp click of car doors closing and the crackle of radio signals. Part of him wishes Roy would just get it over with and tell them about Ed so they can come up here and _kill_ him.

No. Al wouldn’t forgive him if he did that. Al, who’s off scouring the world for that one thing everyone gave up on years ago: a cure.  
  
Ed tests one of his fangs with a fingertip. They never quite go away, the enlarged canines; that’s another vampire myth Ed’s had the pleasure of debunking. Retractable fangs- fucking ridiculous. And sunlight. Sunlight doesn’t kill vampires, doesn’t even hurt them.  Although long periods of exposure have an effect kinda like getting really, really drunk.

That’s something Ed doesn’t get to enjoy anymore. Can’t even get blackout drunk to pass the time; he’s tried it. Fuck, he’s tried _everything_. Closest he’s got to a good night’s sleep since he was turned five months ago was injecting himself with a fucking elephant tranquiliser he got off some creep in a bar downtown.

That’s what he does, these days. Sits around in bars searching for a way to stop the constant fucking _awakeness_ \- and watches humans give themselves up to the vampires for fun. He’s seen it so many fucking times; the nightclubs, the basements, flashing techno lights and the overwhelming stench of cheap vodka as he knocks back shot after fucking shot in an attempt to _feel_ something. Humans, letting themselves be Turned. Right in front of him.  
Suicide, rebellion, addiction, boredom- there are thousands of reasons why they do it, but Ed’s never met one of them that didn’t come to regret it afterwards.  
Like, sure, the immortality part is pretty fucking cool, but then you realise that the price of immortality isn’t limited to just the burning need to rip people’s fucking throats out, and the _I can do anything!_ shit wears of pretty fuckin’ quickly.  
The hunger is part of it, yeah, but then there’s the not sleeping, the heightened senses that make _breathing_ painful, the whole exchanging life as a vampire for your soul, and, of course, the fact that sooner or later, your little brother is going to be older than you. And you’re going to have to stand there and watch your last remaining family member die.  
Because you can’t age, but the rest of humanity can.

Ed drags a hand over his eyes. Fuck.

He sits on the couch, and immediately springs back up again, because it still smells like Roy. Shaking his head to clear it, he stumbles over to the window, drawing in a deep breath.  
The nearest hospital is three blocks away, the streets are being patrolled by Exterminators, and the blood transfusion stores are guarded under maximum security- but his mouth still tastes of Roy’s blood, and if he doesn’t drink something else soon he won’t be able to stop himself from going after him.

That’s what he’s most scared of. That one day, his willpower is going to break, and he’ll become one of them. _Berserk._

Ed re-laces his boots, pulls a knife out of a hidden panel in the wall and slides it into his belt- can never be too careful- and, still buzzing from the flash of energy Roy’s blood gave him, places one foot on the windowsill.

He breathes in again, noting the positions of the patrolling Exterminators, and swings himself out of the window and into the night.

Even risking his neck (haha) to break into the hospital was better than sitting in his broken fucking apartment going crazy thinking about Roy’s blood.

 

***

 

There’s a break in at a hospital that night. Roy hears about from Maes, and when he tells him that the description is a vampire with golden eyes, he only just manages to stop the flicker of recognition playing over his face. Maes still notices, of course.

“What aren’t you telling me, Roy?” he asks, and Roy shakes his head, signing a piece of paperwork.

“I ran into that vampire the other day,” he says. It’s half the truth.

“One of the two you took out? Nice work.” Maes grins at him.

Roy rolls his eyes. “No. The ones I took out are either very dead or very injured, Maes, and it doesn’t sound like this one is either of those things.”

He’ll ask Ed what happened to them later; an explanation is the _least_ he’s owed, after all. Right now, a different squad is searching for the three that got away, but Roy isn’t entirely sure that they’ll be able to find them.  
As well as that, for the first time in his career, the praise he’s receiving isn’t sitting well with him. If he’d listened to Riza, if he’d brought in back up…those three vampires wouldn’t be free right now. _Ed, though_ , he thinks, _could I really find a way to stop Riza or Jean or any of the others from killing him?_ Would _I?_

Maes shrugs, handing him another sheet of paper. “Commander told me to tell you he’s impressed, by the way. And that you got a raid coming up soon.”

A raid? That means- “They found another nest?” Roy asks, frowning at the sheet of paper.

“Yup,” says Maes, “Some nightclub downtown. Apparently humans have been going there- to get Turned.”

“ _What_?”

Maes nods gravely, swirling his coffee mug. “Some kind of new trend. Rebellious teenagers, an alternative to suicide, that kind of thing.”

Roy wonders if Ed knows about this. If Ed’s ever been. It occurs to him that being on speaking terms with a vampire is a good way to get information about that side of the world- but he suspects that Ed wouldn’t be willing to tell him anything.

“That’s awful,” he says, and hands Maes the paperwork back. “Here. I’m taking my lunch break.”

Maes gives him a lazy salute, and Roy gets his coat from the rack behind the door. “I’m stepping out,” he calls to Riza, who nods.

“Are you armed, Sir?”

Roy holds up his gun. “Of course.”

She tips her head in acquiescence, and Roy leaves, closing the door gently behind him. He’s preoccupied as he walks out of the main building, waving to the receptionist at the door, who blushes. It’s only when he’s halfway there that he realises where he’s going: Ed’s apartment.

Well, hell, it’s not like he wasn’t planning on dropping by anyway.

This time, he takes the elevator.

When he opens the door, he walks straight in, gun pointed in the corners of the room’; there’s no sign of any hostile vampires, but there’s no sign of Ed, either-

Ed, who leaps at him from the ceiling and slams him into the wall, kicking the door closed again whipping his claws up to his throat, eyes wild and furious-

Before he realises who it is he has pinned to his wall, and his expression relaxes. He rolls his eyes, pulling away from Roy with a sigh and flopping down onto the couch. His voice is muffled by the pillows.

“Thanks for knocking, you bastard.”

Roy rubs his throat gingerly, holstering his gun. “I didn’t know if you would be alone.”

Ed turns his head to narrows his eyes at him from the sofa. “The fuck is that supposed to mean?”

Oh. Oh- Ed thinks he means- _oh_. Roy raises an eyebrow at him, turning his smile sultry; “Well, Ed, that’s not really what I meant at _all_ , but if you want to play it that way…”

Ed spring up from the sofa with a grace that shocks the breath out of Roy’s lungs, and punches him in the arm.

“Shut the fuck up!” he says -more like shrieks, actually- and turns away again, restless, pacing. Roy laughs, taking a seat on the abandoned couch. It feels wrong, to be so _relaxed_ , even if his guard isn’t completely down. He’s not _that_ stupid.

“By the way,” he says, “how do you know my name?”

Ed looks up at him, momentarily startled, and then relaxes into a lazy grin. “Are you kidding? Everyone knows you. You shoot vampires every fuckin’ day. I’m pretty sure there are at least ten syndicates with vendettas against you. Apart from the Director himself, you’re at the top of, like, every fucking kill list each group has.”

Oh. That’s- well, it’s not good, but it’s not exactly _bad,_ either; at least the vampires are somewhat scared of him, right? Although being a target _does_ make it more dangerous for his team. He raises his eyebrows.  
“Interesting.”  
  
Ed scoffs at him.

“’Interesting’,” he mimics, throwing himself down in a rickety wooden chair shoved against the wall. “Yeah. Fuckin’ stupid, more like.”

Roy doesn’t reply to that; what would he say? Something witty, maybe, but Ed has a point. He should’ve thought about how much attention he was attracted form the other side when he went in on squadron raids alone, or when he led groups of Exterminators against the most notorious vampires in the city and won.

There is a long moment of silence.

“So,” Roy says, into the quiet, “Blood banks.”  
  
 Ed stops his pacing. He gives Roy a drawn out, unreadable look.

“What about them.” he says, flatly. It’s not a question. Roy sighs.

“Nothing, just- I thought you didn’t have to feed more than once every five days.”

“I don’t,” says Ed.

“Then why break into a blood bank?”

Ed heaves a sigh, and throws himself down to settle, cross-legged, on the floor. “I didn’t even take anything,” he mutters, “security was too fuckin’ tight.”

“That’s because people need those transfusions, Edward.”

“So do I!” Ed says, glaring at him, and Roy shakes his head. He notices that Ed doesn’t respond to the _Edward-_ that must be his full name, after all. Interesting.

“I know you do- but you already took some of _my_ blood, didn’t you?”

This time, Ed looks away from him, to the floor. He mumbles something that Roy doesn’t catch.

“What?”

“Not _enough_ ,” Ed says, louder, staring resolutely at a broken chair in the corner.

“Why didn’t you _say_?” Roy asks, exasperated, “here. You can have more, if it’ll keep you from breaking into hospitals and traumatising the staff.”

He shrugs off his jacket, unbuttoning the top few buttons of his shirt, and Ed makes a strangled choking noise and waves his hands in front of him.

“Woah, woah, woah, stop, stop-  Roy, fucking hell, _stop_ -,”

“Why?” Roy asks, succeeding in rolling his sleeve up past his elbow. Ed turns resolutely away, refusing to look at him.

“ _Because_ ,” he says through gritted teeth, “I can’t- if it happens again I won’t be able to stop myself from killing you. Alright? It’s too much. _You’re_ too much.”

Roy pauses. And then he leans forwards. His shirt collar is a little open; Ed can see his pulse beating gently in his throat.  “Listen to me. I have a duty to protect the city from vampires- and that _includes_ you, no matter how helpful you’re being  in fighting other vampires and abstaining from killing people. If I can prevent you from- I don’t know, taking blood from a hospital, or, maybe- just _maybe_ \- succumbing to the bloodlust, or whatever it is, and hurting someone… I will.”

Ed’s eyes narrow, his jaw clenches. Roy stands up.

“No,” Ed says, backing away, but _god_ he wants to say yes. _Needs_ to say yes. “You don’t- you don’t fucking _get_ it. You fuckingidiot. You’re just- you’re right _there_. A living, breathing food source. I can’t- I can’t guarantee I won’t just _kill_ you, alright?”

“Then don’t guarantee it,” says Roy, and moves closer; Ed’s back against the wall and every inch of him straining to get away yet somehow frozen in place. Roy takes Ed’s hand and presses it against his chest. His heartbeat is strong and steady, a drum keeping time for the thrum of blood in his veins, the pounding rhythm of _life_. Everything that Ed doesn’t have. Everything he’s fucking _desperate_ for.  
 “Ed. I don’t know _why_ you’re not like the other vampires- and believe me, I’m going to find out- but you are. And you’re not _taking_ this form me, I can promise you that. I’m giving it to you. I’m offering this to you. You stopped yourself last time, didn’t you?”

“Just _barely_ ,” Ed hisses, right up close and Roy’s eyes are- fuck, they’re so _dark._ His heart is thundering under Ed’s palm. “I just _barely_ stopped myself from fucking _draining_ you, and do you know what happens then? You get Turned. Or you die. And _trust_ me- dying is the better option there. Get out of the fucking way before I do something stupid.”

Very slowly, Roy reaches down. His fingertips brush Ed’s cheek, his jaw. With his other hand, he tugs, gently, and Ed- he can’t resist, doesn’t _want_ to resist- sways forwards. So close to the skin of Roy’s neck. All he can smell is Roy, Roy, Roy.  
If he wanted to, he could just lean that little bit closer, and then all he’d have to do would be..

What? All he’d have to do would be _what_?

 _Kill him,_ says a voice in the back of Ed’s head, _kill him and drain him dry and then go looking for more_.

And he could. That’s the thing; he really, really _could_. He’s more than strong enough, now, gun or no gun, he could take Roy down easy as breathing.

 _But do you_ want _to?_

And that’s the fucked up part. He should want to, shouldn’t he? And some part of him really, really does- but most of him is thinking, _no_. Kill Roy? No. He doesn’t want _that_ ; drink Roy’s blood, sure, that’s a cause he can get behind, but _kill_ him? Hurt him?

It’s the most human thought Ed’s had since he was first Turned, and even now, with Roy’s blood still singing through his veins, the taste of it anticipated heavy on his tongue, the smell of him, so _close_ , making his head _spin_ \- Ed doesn’t want to hurt him. _Won’t_ hurt him, which is maybe the strangest of all.

Roy closes his eyes, and pulls him that centimetre closer.

Ed- gives in.

 

***

 

There’s a long minute in which Ed’s breath fans hot against Roy’s neck, and he makes his decision. He doesn’t know what he’s doing, not _really,_ but for whatever reason, he’s- fascinated. He wants to know Ed. He wants to understand him. He tells himself that he just wants to _use_ Ed to gain information about the vampires, that that’s the only reason why he’s doing this, but he knows that’s not true. Well- maybe slightly. But mostly, Roy just wants…

He doesn’t know what he wants.

Ed’s hair tickles the back of Roy’s hand where he has it pressed against his back, and he pushes, pulling Ed in.

 

Ed’s mouth is cold, then, suddenly, shockingly warm on Roy’s neck; Ed makes a tiny, helpless sound in the back of his throat, and then he leaning up on his toes, eyelashes flickering shut- Roy feels the sweep of them against his throat- and a sharp, needle-like pain shoots through his skin.

And then it fades, and they’re moving, and now Roy is the one with his back to the wall, and Ed’s lips move slowly on his skin, and Roy is _sure_ that this isn’t what getting your blood sucked out is supposed to feel like, but, nevertheless. It does. It really, really, does.

He’s aware that his thoughts aren’t making a lot of sense right now, but that’s mainly because Ed, who- _yes_ , alright- is very, very attractive, and if he wasn’t, you know, a vampire, and if they’d met in a bar on the street or in a store, Roy would not have said no to those eyes-

Where was he going with this?

Right, yes; his thoughts aren’t making a lot of sense, but that’s because Ed is giving him what is akin to a hickey, except more dangerous and with more potential fatalities.

 

***

 

 _God_ if this isn’t the best thing he’s ever fucking tasted. Blood transfusion shit has _nothing_ on this, _nothing_ \- this is something else, this is something _transcendent_ , and Ed is…Ed is supposed to be trying not to kill and/or Turn Roy into a vampire.

Ed opens his eyes, and the strangest thing, the fucking strangest thing, is that he doesn’t feel- crazy. It’s difficult, yeah, but he’s still _in control;_ no matter how fucking delicious this shit is, Ed doesn’t _want_ to hurt Roy, so he can stop himself.  
  
And to prove it, he does.

He pulls back, stares down at the red mark he’s made on Roy’s skin- feels himself flush (and isn’t it great that he can flush? With all this blood knocking around in his veins, he can flush properly. He can look a little more human; a little less monster) because, shit, it looks like a fucking hickey, is what it looks like. He clears his throat, and realises that he’s got his hands fisted in Roy’s shirt, pressing him back against the wall.

With some difficulty, he lets go, and takes one measured step back.

Fucking hell.

 

After a pause, Roy opens his eyes again, blinking blearily, and seems surprised to find Ed standing there.

“You…didn’t kill me,” he says. His voice sounds odd. Ed scowls.

“Fuck you; _no,_ I didn’t kill you. Although if you don’t shut your mouth I’ll start wishing I _had_ , he adds darkly, and Roy… _laughs_. Actually fucking laughs, like Ed’s said something that’s _funny_ and not just, you know, erring on homicidal.

Fuck this. Ed stands up, kicking his chair away, and turns to face the window again- still not fixed. Fuck.

“I’ve been meaning to ask you,” says Roy, and his voice is so fucking _casual,_ so, _smooth_ and stupid and- fuck, Ed, shut the _fuck_ up- “What happened to those two vampires? The dead ones?”

Dead ones. Hah. Ed turns back to face him, grinning sharply. _Literally_ sharply; his goddamn fangs are still trying their best to pierce his lip.

“They weren’t dead, first of all,” he says, “takes more than that to kill us, you know. You Exterminators just kinda slow ‘em down, and they get scared and move to a different area that’s being controlled by a different branch.”

“What did you do with them, then?” Roy asks, and he seems- worried. Huh. He probes gingerly at his neck with his fingertips, then prods at the site a little harder when he discovers it doesn’t hurt all that much.  “Did they wake up?”

Ed shakes his head. “Nah. When I went out to the hospital I took ‘em with me. Left them in some alleyway for the patrols to find.” He shrugs. “Whatever. I don’t know what happened to them, and I don’t fuckin’ care.”

Roy digests this information. “Well,” he says, after a long pause, “at least they’re not in _here_ anymore. They didn’t add much to the décor.”

And now Ed’s the one who’s laughing, even though this whole situation is so _fucking_ surreal, and stupid, and Ed should be _fleeing,_ or at least, you know, kicking Roy’s ass; definitely not sitting here _laughing_ with him. He doesn’t get to do shit like that anymore. He can’t just- just fucking pretend like he’s not one of Them, can’t pretend like he’s human and it’s perfectly fucking fine for him to be letting an Exterminator into his home, let alone _making fucking small talk_ with one.

But they are. They’re sitting there, _talking_. Chatting, even; Roy on the couch and now Ed’s lounging on the floor, scornfully debunking all of Roy’s misconceptions about vampires.

“Vampires are undead,” Roy says, and Ed scoffs.

“No,” he says, “Just soulless.”

“ _Soulless?”_

“Yeah,” says Ed, and there’s a look in his eyes that tells Roy not to pursue the subject anymore.

“What about- animal blood sustains you, too? It doesn’t have to be from a human?”

Ed fixes him with a glare. “Do you think,” he says slowly, “that I would be relying on _you_ if I could just kill someone’s fucking pet cat _instead_?”

“Fair enough,” says Roy, “That was a stupid question.”

“Yeah,” Ed says, “It was.”

***

 

It’s not as late as Roy thought it would be; it seems he was only out for a few minutes, but still- his lunch break has now stretched to being an hour long, and soon he needs to head back, or at least call in to let Riza know he’s not dead. But this…this is- fun. Interesting, and enjoyable, and fascinating, and _fun_. Strange to think it, but it’s true.

“How about this: sunlight kills vampires.”

“The fuck?” Ed asks, “No. Why the hell would _sunlight_ kill a vampire? Although,” he adds thoughtfully, “if I stay in the sun for more than a couple hours I start feeling kind of drunk.”

“Kind of drunk,” repeats Roy, then laughs at Ed’s glare. “No, I believe you; moving on: a stake through the heart or beheading are the only ways to kill a vampire.”

At this, Ed jumps to his feet. “What the actual _fuck_?” he yells, throwing his hands up in a gesture of _I’m fucking done; this is too much_ , “Is this the bullshit they teach you in vampire-killing school? Roy, I’m _pretty fucking sure_ that stabbing someone in the heart or cutting off their fucking _head_ would kill _anyone_! Stop asking such stupid fucking questions, this isn’t a fucking teen romance novel, you dumbass-,”

And Roy’s laughing, and Ed’s glaring, and his eyes are bright and the colour of blazing sunsets, and this is the happiest he’s been in years- which, when Roy thinks about it, is slightly worrying.

 

***

Roy is flicking through Ed’s notes. Or at least, he starts off by flicking through them, and then he realises that, actually, this could be incredibly important, and goes back through and reads them properly. Ed watches him, still slightly wary, still unsure of how okay this is. Roy doesn’t know what to say- _You don’t have to be cautious. I literally let you drink my blood- twice. And now you’re letting me see your top secret notes about vampires; information which you_ know _I am going to relay back to the very team of people working to eradicate your existence. We’ve moved past caution by this point._

“You’ve got a text, by the way,” Ed says, wrinkling his nose absentmindedly at the ceiling; Roy looks up and sets the sheaf of papers on the couch next to him, extracting his phone from his pocket to check. Sure enough, he has a message from Maes.

_Roy- tell whichever beautiful woman you’re cavorting with on your ‘’’lunch break’’’ that you need to leave! Raid starts in half an hour. Riza is giving your empty chair a Look._

“Let me guess,” Ed says, “you’ve got a vampire to exterminate.”  
 Roy sighs.

“That is my _job_ , you know,” he reminds him, and Ed’s scowl deepens.

“I _know_ ,” he mutters. “Doesn’t mean I’m fucking happy about it.”

 

***

Roy stands at the door: this, again. There’s something unsaid between them, something that hangs in the air, making everything seem distorted and uncomfortable. Roy clears his throat.

“How long will my blood sustain you for?”

Ed rolls his eyes, kicking his feet out- he’s still wearing those ridiculous combat boots. “Look, I don’t need-,”

“Ed. Please. Humour me.”

Ed scowls darkly. “…’Bout three or four days.”

 “Then I’ll see you in three days.”

The change to Ed’s demeanour is immediate; Roy is slowly finding out that Ed does no emotion by halves, and this is no disappointment. His eyes widen almost comically, and he flings his hands up, gesticulating wildly, “Wha- no! No way! I’ll just hijack a blood bank- properly, this time- or something; you’ll get arrested for consorting with the enemy or some shit-,”

“Ed, people _need_ blood banks. Life threatening illnesses? Transfusions?”

“I _know_ that. Do you think I _enjoy_ doing this?”

“No. Which is why it would best for everyone involved if you take blood from _me_ instead. I’ll see you in two days, Ed.” He stands up, typing out a quick reply to Maes: _I’m on my way_.

“…..You’re a fucking bastard, you know that?”

“I know. Take care of yourself.”

 

***

 

It’s almost a full week before Roy sees him again; in between the raid (which Havoc has coined as, ‘That one time Squadron Leader Mustang used a box of sawdust, half a can of pepper spray and a lighter to make a flamethrower’ and the paperwork, but he eventually finds himself back at Ed’s door- this time, with information.

“Fire,” he says, when Ed opens the door to him.

He blinks, unintentionally disarming. “What?”

Roy follows him in, shutting the door behind him.

“Fire,” he repeats, “It kills vampires.”

At this, Ed stills. “…What?”

“That’s what you were researching, right?” Roy gestures to the stack of notes on the side. Ed nods, after a moment.

“I- yeah. What do you mean by ‘fire’?”

Roy takes off his jacket, settling onto the couch. “I mean I used a box of sawdust, half a can of pepper spray and a lighter to make an impromptu flamethrower, and set four vampires alight. They were- definitely not alive.”

Ed squints up at him. “The fuck does that mean?”

Roy swallows. “It means…they were- _ashes_. Just- burnt to a crisp. It was…kind of horrific, actually; I hadn’t expected that _at all_.”

Ed’s reaching for paper and a pen; his eyebrows draw together and he scribbles. “I must be- something about the chemical composition of our skin,” he mutters, “it’s different to a normal human’s…I don’t know- I need to research this.”

“By research, do you mean ‘set some vampires on fire’?” Roy asks, cautiously. Ed looks up from the paper, and his smile is bright and very, very dangerous.

“Why, Mustang,” he says, “Thanks for volunteering to let me in on a raid with you.”

“Ed-,” Roy begins, “that’s not-,”

“Or,” says Ed, “I could head over to a bar, lure one of the assholes Turning humans outside and set _them_ on fire. Thereby attracting every fucking vampire the city has to offer and attempting to fight all of them off at once without getting injured or, like, _eaten_.”

Ed _knows_ about the bars? About the humans being Turned? Roy’s expression must’ve given his recognition away, because Ed gives him a look that says, _yeah, Mustang, I know, you know, we all know._

“The bar,” Roy says, “you know where it is?”

Ed nods, levelling his gaze at Roy, and this is a display of trust that Roy hadn’t expected. This is Ed, telling him that he knows that Roy needs information, and he’s _voluntarily_ giving it to him. Where does Roy stand now?

“It’s downtown,” says Ed, leaning back on his hands. “Like, super downtown. I can show you some time. Burst in there and kick some vampire ass.”

He looks up at Roy and his smile is savage. Not for the first time, Roy finds himself wholly and utterly bewildered by the creature before him.  
(And calling him ‘creature’ isn’t...right; not anymore. He can’t think of Ed as a vampire, as anything _like_ a vampire. Somehow, he’s started thinking of him as…a friend? An accomplice? A _person._ A human being, despite the fangs and the claws and the strange, inimitable grace.)  


“I’ll see what I can do,” Roy says, and he isn’t lying. Already, he’s thinking of ways to convince Riza to allow Ed to accompany them on a trip- could he say that he’s here on work experience? Would they be able to hide Ed’s vampireish nature? The fangs would be a problem, but maybe he could just not speak- wait, no, that wouldn’t work; Roy can’t imagine Ed restraining his usual snappish remarks, even in Riza’s presence.

Ed yawns, fangs glinting in the pale light.

“How have you been feeling?” Roy asks carefully, remembering a little too late that vampires don’t sleep. He can’t imagine _that,_ either. He can just about manage going without sleep for two or three days; any more than that and he’s liable to fall asleep at his desk, no matter how much caffeine he’s had.

Ed shrugs tightly. “I dunno. Having…blood…makes me, I don’t know, _stronger_. I’m not, like, _exhausted,_ anymore. I’m still fucking tired, but you can stop looking at me like I’m about to keel over or some shit.”

“I’m not-,”

“You are.”

Roy swallows.

Ed looks up at him with a clear calm glint in his eyes, and tells him, “You don’t have to worry about me.”

Roy bites the inside of his cheek.

“I do.”

And Ed is looking at him with a strange expression on his face, half thoughtful, half calculating; he stands, slowly, and stares down at Roy with a searching expression on his face. Roy doesn’t dare move. What was he thinking? It’s not often that he lets himself go like that; he shouldn’t have said anything, and his mind is racing trying to come up with a way to fix it. Whatever ‘it’ is.

Ed’s eyes flicker downwards and Roy knows without following his gaze that he’s looking at the dark red bruise just visible under Roy’s collar. To Maes, to Jean, to Breda and Feury and Falman, it’s nothing but a love bite.  
To Roy, it’s a _hell_ of a lot more than that.

With his usual predatory grace, Ed moves towards him until he’s standing directly in front of Roy, golden eyes intense and unwavering.

“Ed,” Roy begins, “I-,”

“Edward Elric,” Ed says, and seems to come to a decision about something, because his eyes clear and his chin tilts infinitesimally upwards. “My name is Edward Elric.”  
And then, in one smooth, fluid movement, he swings himself onto Roy’s lap, winds one hand in his hair, and kisses him without hesitation.

 _Edward Elric_.

There is a moment where Roy resists- just one moment, and then he realises that this is a fight he doesn’t have a single hope in the world of winning, and resolves instead to teach Ed- Edward, Ed, Ed- how to kiss properly.

It’s all melting warmth and lips sliding against each other; their noses bump and Ed flicks his hair out of his face; Roy can feel the tension in his muscles as he slides his palms over Ed’s shoulder blades; he must be holding himself back to keep from hurting Roy…

His fangs are probably sharp and pointed and unsafe, but Roy doesn’t notice them; he’s not kissing a vampire, he’s kissing a boy who happens to be a vampire, too.

Edward is a vampire, and Roy is an Exterminator, and that should really matter a whole lot more than it does at this moment in time.

Roy closes his eyes, slides his tongue over Ed’s lower lip. Ed’s breath huffs into his mouth, and Roy pulls him closer, traces his hand over Ed’s jaw. Ed bites down playfully on his lip; for a second Roy is afraid he’s broken the skin and- and what? Is he afraid of Ed drinking his blood? _I think we’ve moved past that by now, to tell the truth_. Ed grins into the kiss, then breaks back slightly to pant at the ceiling, tipping his head back and smiling, hair shaking down his spine. Roy presses kisses to his jawline, his throat; Ed’s legs are spread wide over his lap and how far are they going to go with this?  


“Holy shit, Mustang,” Ed says, breathless, ducking back down, fingers sweeping over Roy’s face, staring down at him, eyes wild and sparkling, and Roy smiles slowly in reply. Ed leans in again, kissing him again, hands cupping Roy’s face, Roy’s fingers on his waist. Their tongues slide against each other; Ed makes a half-moan gasping sound that vibrates at the back of Roy’s throat. He swallows it. His heart is beating very fast; the couch creaks under them; Ed smells like clean flame and worn leather and blood. His eyes are half lidded, eyes like burning coals and lips chapped and warm and wet.

Then they’re not kissing anymore, and Ed is holding up Roy’s phone, running his tongue over his lips as if to savour the taste.

“’Riza calling’,” he reads off the screen, and hands the phone to Roy with a smile that doesn’t reach his eyes. “Work?”

Roy tangles his fingers in Ed’s hair as he presses the button to accept the call; Ed leans back against him, shifting so he’s sitting between Roy’s legs, back to his chest, Roy leaning back against the couch. His hair is like spun silk; Roy draws his fingers through it, gently separating the snags.

“Lieutenant,” he says, “has something happened?”

“Sir,” says Riza, and her voice is clipped and fast. Roy sits up straighter, Ed turning to look at him. “Headquarters was attacked. The whole force has been despatched; the vampires fled the scene after killing the receptionist and five officers in the mess room.”

Headquarters attacked, officers killed. Broken glass and blood on the white linoleum of the mess room; tables overturned and chairs shattered into matchsticks. Roy swallows hard.

“I’m on my way.”

Ed’s eyes are luminous as he snaps the phone shut.

 

***

The three downstairs windows (reinforced glass, bulletproof, supposedly _vampire-_ proof) are broken; chips of three-inch thick polycarbonate glitter at Roy as he steps out of the car, snapping the safety off on his gun. His team is waiting for him outside the main building, already looking worse for wear.

“When did this happen?” he asks, staring at the building above them. Although he can’t see much, the silhouettes of security personnel rushing back and forth are clear through the windows, and there are three police cars and an ambulance parked outside. Someone carries an armful of white sheets into the building, grim-faced. Roy turns back to face his squad.

“Half an hour ago,” says Havoc, dropping his cigarette to the ground and crushing it under his foot. “There was no warning, nothing. They just…broke in. Started killing everyone in the mess room and then came upstairs…”

“We chased them out, though,” Feury finishes, pale faced but steady, gripping his gun tightly. “And they jumped out of the third-floor window and headed East, towards the suburbs.  There was a red alert sent out; _all_ the divisions are coming in, even from the other cities.”

Riza is looking past him, into his car, frowning slightly. She looks up and meets his eyes. The look on her face is faint, but Roy knows her well enough by now to understand all her tells.

 _Who is that_? her eyes ask him. Roy shakes his head slightly. _Later_.

In the car, Ed props his feet up on the dashboard, and cranes his neck to see inspect the building.

 

***

 

“Ed, no.”

“Why the hell not? I owe those fuckers; let me go with you.”

“Ed, _no_ \- you don’t even know for sure that it’s them-,”

“Oh,” says Ed, eyes cold, “It’s them.” He leans against the door, slouched but shoulder still so sure, arms folded. Roy hesitates with one am in his jacket sleeve.

“- Look,” he says, “Even if it is them, I can’t risk it. It’s too dangerous; my team will _kill_ you, Ed. That’s if the other vampires don’t get there first.”

“So tell you team _not_ to!” Ed pouts, resolute. “I’m not moving ‘til you let me come with you.”

This is ridiculous. Roy tells him so. Ed gives him a sharp grin.

“If it’s so ridiculous,” he says, “just fucking let me come too, and we can get the fuck on with kicking their asses.”

“ _No._ ”

Ed throws up his arms, kicking the door. “I can _help_ you!”

“It’s too dangerous.”

“Fuck off. I can handle myself; I’ve been doing it for five fucking months already and I’m not dead yet-,”

“You literally almost died less than a week ago,” says Roy, adjusting his collar. “Ed- move.”

“No.”

His gun is in his belt, fully loaded. Roy could shoot him. It wouldn’t kill him. Ed’s eyes on his, bright and fierce and determined.

Roy deflates.

“ _Fine_.”

“Fucking _finally_ , I thought we’d be here all fucking _day_ \- come on, come on, let’s _go_ -,”

Swinging out of the door, hair flying out behind him; Roy shut it carefully behind him and follows him down the hall, they clatter down the stairs and Ed is so vibrant, how could Roy ever hurt him? _Why_ would he?

“Ed,” he says, as they stand next to the ca. Ed hops up and down, waiting impatiently for him to unlock it. “Don’t get out of the car until I tell you to. Please?” Ed opens his  mouth to argue, then looks to the side, scuffing his foot in the dirt.

“Fine.”

“I need to placate Riza. And find out what happened. And make sure they don’t kill you.”

Ed rolls his eyes. “Fine, _fine_ , can we go now?”

Roy presses the button on the keyring, sliding into the driver’s seat. Ed immediately kicks his feet up onto the dashboard and starts rifling through the glovebox.

“Fine.”

 

***

 

“…any questions?”  Roy’s outlined the main assault plan, which goes something along the lines of ‘let’s find them and kill them before someone else does’, but he hasn’t explained _how_ they’re going to find them yet. That is, he hasn’t explained _Ed_ yet-but that’s only because he doesn’t know _how_. What is he supposed to say? _Oh, and, by the way, there’s this vampire who’s going to help us find and kill his brethren, let’s all just trust him implicitly, alright?_

His team looks back at him, poised and ready and war-torn and angry, and Roy is so fucking proud of them.

Havoc raises a hand, cigarette drooping in the corner of his mouth. “Yeah, uh, sir? Who’s that?”

Who’s that? Who else could it be?  
Who else can move so silently Roy doesn’t even notice when they exit the car and saunter- and Roy _knows_ he sauntered; of course he did- up behind him to lean lazily against the wall as if he owns it; _who_ else?

Ed pushes off of the wall, fixing Havoc with a sharp grin. He waves. “Ed Elric,” he says, and his fangs glint.

Riza’s gun is poised to shoot in less than a millisecond; the others draw their weapons just moments after she sets her aim on Ed and he raises his hands mockingly, grin turning wicked.

“What the hell-,”

“- is that a-?”

“Sir, get away from him-!”

Shit, shit, _shit_. _Why couldn’t you just stay in the damn car_?

 Riza doesn’t break eye contact with Ed as she says, coolly, “tell me there’s a reason for this, Sir.”

Roy clears his throat. Ed fraises an eyebrow at Riza, and folds his arms.

“Stand down, Lieutenant,” Roy says with all the authority he can muster, “he’s here to help.”

“Yeah,” Ed mutters, “’help’.”

“Making sarcastic comments in no way alleviates your situation,” Roy tells him. Ed wrinkles his nose.

“Hey, fuck you. You said you’d tell ‘em not to shoot me, but _no_ , the great Roy Mustang doesn’t even care if his friends fucking _kill_ me-,”

“Ed, you _made me_ bring you. I said they would shoot you; I said I would _try_ \- and I _told you to stay in the car_. If you weren’t complete incapable of sitting tight for _one minute_ while I sort things out, this would-,”

“With all due respect, Sir,” Riza interrupts, gun unwavering. They look round, Ed disregarding the guns aimed for his head, mouth still half open to retort. Havoc’s cigarette has fallen out of his mouth and onto the floor, smoking slightly. “Explain what a vampire is doing here before I shoot the both of you to save time.”

Roy coughs. Ed scowls.

“He’s on our side,” says Roy, but only gets as far as that before Ed breaks in.

“I am _not_ , I’m on my _own_ side, thanks very much! Why the fuck would I be on _your_ side? All you people want to do is _kill_ me!”

“You do realise that that does nothing to help your own case, don’t you?” Roy asks him, and Ed tosses his hair back, hissing.

“Shut the fuck up! Look, lady,” he directs this at Riza, who quirks her eyebrows and tightens her finger on the trigger almost imperceptibly. Ed pales. “-Lieutenant. Ma’am. I’m not exactly on the Exterminators’ side, but I’m sure as hell not on _their_ side, either. They want me dead as much as you guys do.”

“And why is that?” Riza asks.

Ed lifts his chin. “Prob’ly has something to do with the fact I keep tryin’ to kill ‘em,” he says.

Roy takes a deep breath. Riza’s eyebrows rise ever-so-slightly.

“Kill them?” she asks. Ed shrugs.

“They don’t like me very much,” he tells her, “since I don’t fucking feed on humans, or whatever.” He glances almost imperceptibly at Roy before his gaze flickers away. Riza catches it, makes eyes contact with Roy, and he knows he will be having a very serious and life-threatening conversation with her later.

“Lower your weapons,” he orders them again, and this time, Havoc, Feury, Breda and Falman put their guns away. Riza gives Ed one more long look, eyes steel-cold and hard as flint, before nodding slightly and stowing her gun back in her belt.

“Very well, sir,” she says. “How are we going to find them?”

Behind Roy, Ed lets out an audible breath, and shivers. “She’s fucking scary,” he mutters. Roy lets out a half-hysterical laugh.

“Be grateful she didn’t put a bullet in your head,” he says, and Ed hunches his shoulders.

“Whatever,” he mumbles. Roy clears his throat.

“Ed can sense them,” he tells the others, and looks pointedly in Ed’s direction, who shrugs.

“Yeah, maybe.”

“Very helpful, thank you. Ed can sense them, and trace their scent to wherever they went. Failing that, he knows the biggest vampire haunts of the city- he can lead us there, we’ll go in and even if we don’t find the ones we’re looking for first time, we’ll be able to take down some of the biggest infestations.”

“And if this is a trap?” Riza asks, eyes on Ed again, mouth tight.

“It’s not a fucking trap!”

“fi this is a trap,” Roy says, “I will take full responsibility.”

 _I hope to god I won’t have to_.

Ed meets his eyes, fists clenching. “It’s not a trap,” he says again, quietly. Roy nods. More than anything, he wants to reach out and lace his fingers with Ed’s- but he can’t. He can’t. _I trust you_.

“Then let’s get started.”

 

***

 

Sometime over the past week or so, Roy’s forgotten that Ed is a vampire, and that he has all the enhanced senses that come with that. he moves silently, with a peculiar, savage kind of grace that shows that weight of his strength behind his soft steps. He places one hand on the wall as he walks into headquarters, breathing in deeply. A paramedic kneeling over a limp, bloody body looks up, eyes widening as she sees him, hand going for the gun at her belt. Roy holds up a hand to stop her, and slowly, she lowers her hand again, watching Ed move through the entrance hall with her mouth open slightly.

Roy knows the feeling.

Ed follows a trail of blood splatters towards the stairs, pauses to inspect a spot of seemingly blank wall, and sweeps his hand up the railing as he climbs the stairs, heading for the first floor.

They follow him, holding their respective breath.

It’s when they reach the top floor that Ed stills, gazing out of the smashed window with narrowed eyes, absentmindedly stepping around the glass littering the floor under the sill. He leans on the edge of the window frame, hair blowing in the wind, and Roy’s gaze is drawn to the strong muscles shifting under his skin at his back. Ed turns, and Roy thinks about kissing him, touching him, drawing him closer and _protecting_ him.  
Like he needs protecting. Like Roy even has a _chance._

“Well, I know where they went,” Ed says, and beside Roy, Riza stiffens.

“You do?” He asks, and it’s not as if he doubted Ed, not even for a second- it’s more like he’s in awe of all this, all these _things_ that Ed can do and the nonchalant way he does them, as if tracking down a group of bloodthirsty- literally- vampires who want to _kill_ him is all in a day’s work.

Hell, Roy thinks, it might be.

Ed drags a hand through his ponytail, scowling as his fingers snag on the tangles. “Yeah. One of ‘em is still injured from _your_ attacks the other day- I gotta say, I’m kinda impressed.” He nods at Roy, eyes glinting. “I can smell it. The others are fine, though. And I’m pretty fucking certain they’re headed for Homunculus, you know, that bar downtown.”

“Homunculus?” Riza furrows her brow. “There was a case there a while back- three months ago, I’m fairly sure. A group of teenagers were almost Turned. When we investigated, there was no trace of vampires there; we assumed they’d moved on.”

Ed leans back against the window. “You were wrong,” he says, “or, at least, they came back after a while It’s one of the biggest Turning clubs in the city. I’ve been scoping it out for, like, three weeks. There’re some high up vamps in there, and when I say _high up_ I fucking mean it. Elite shit. They could take all of you in one fucking second; you wouldn’t have time to blink.”

Roy digests this, thinking hard. A group of incredibly dangerous vampires- and if Ed says they don’t stand a chance, Roy believes him. He’s learned quickly that Ed doesn’t sugar-coat things. These vampires were the real deal.

“Does that include the one show attacked us the other day?” Roy asks; part of him is quietly smug that he managed to lastingly injure one of them. The rest of him is furious that he hasn’t manage to incapacitate more. “The ones you said you ‘disposed of’?”

Ed sends him a dark look. “Have you even been listening to anything I’ve said to you over the past few hours?” he asks, “Listen, you bastard, you don’t just fucking dump an injured vampire somewhere and expect it to die quietly. We heal _fast_. I left those two assholes in an alleyway as far away as I could get ‘em and got the hell _out_ of there. From what you’ve told me, the only way to properly kill one of them is to set the fuckers on fire. And I don’t even know if that does the job properly because I wasn’t there to see it.”

He pushes off from the wall, passing through Roy and his team to stand at the top of the stairs. His fists are clenched.  “This whole time you’ve been running around congratulating yourselves after every fucking mission? You haven’t changed a damn thing. They’re still alive. Now they’re just fucking angry.”

 

***

 

“So those two you left,” Roy says to Ed, sitting with his arms tightly folded in the passenger seat, “they haven’t come back for you?”

Ed stares out of the window, watching the buildings fly past. In the street, traffic wardens are setting up blockades; an early curfew has been called and the whole city is shivering, terrified and silent in their homes, curtains drawn and lights turned out. The whole city except the Exterminators, who have fanned out to stand at the entrance and exit of every alleyway, side street and main road in the city. A helicopter hovers overhead, lights flashing, guns swivelling.  
It’s just like the Fall, Roy thinks, memories vague and blurry as he recalls the collapse of the entire world, ten years earlier. A deadly virus, a mutated gene, and within one week, the goddamn apocalypse had broken out, and blood was splashed at the entrance to every major city in the country. The continent. Across the globe.  
  
“They’ve been preparing for war,” Ed says, and Roy looks over; he can’t help it. In front of them, Riza’s car swerves to avoid a burst of gunfire from the bottom floor window of an antique dealer’s store. Blue-uniformed Exterminators sprint over, commands blaring over their megaphones: _Put your weapons down! This is the Extermination Squad!_

 _“_ War?” Roy asks, an icy feeling filling his bones like liquid nitrogen; he clenches the steering wheel. “Like it was ten years ago?”

Ed shrugs listlessly, mouth grim. “Somethin’ like that. I’ve heard rumours, passed around, in bars and from vampires before I beat the shit out of ‘em so they couldn’t remember their fucking names in the morning- but I never fucking through it’d be this soon.” His voice is a low whisper, a half-choked mutter. “Thought me an’ Al’d be far away from here by the time world war fucking four started.”

Al- his brother. Ed had told Roy, earlier, that Al was searching for a cure; his voice had been forcefully casual, even dismissive, but his eyes had held a deeper sort of pain. Roy guessed that Ed hadn’t heard from Al in a while. That he’s worried sick about his brother. That he’s desperate to see him again.

“You’ve been keeping tabs?” Roy asks, and Ed grins humourlessly.

“Sure. I’ve been keeping tabs, Mustang. Been keeping more than fucking tabs; you _read_ my notes. I’m trying to- I don’t know. _Fix_ this. Fix my _self_. Good fucking luck to me.” His expression is bitter, his smile is full of harsh acrimony. He pushes his hair out of his eyes. “Vampires are gathering in this city, Roy. Not just puny fucking vampires who faint as soon as you so much as kick ‘em in the head; these are- _bad_ ones. I thought it was just ‘cause security was ramping up in the other cities, but this is the fucking _hometown_ of the Extermination Squad. The only reason so many big players are arriving is because they’re stirring shit, preparing for war. Kidnapping kids and Turning ‘em- they’re building a fucking _army_. Last week I heard some shit about a fucking _training_ camp. For the newly Turned.” He shakes his head, disgusted.  
“It’s getting out of control. And today- these guys, they’re not just a bunch of idiots who think it’s funny to break into Extermination Headquarters and run away like some fucking _game_ ; they’re serious. They’re _playing_ with you. You think they couldn’t have killed you back then? You think they couldn’t kill _me_?”

There’s a kind of bottomless pit growing slowly wider in Roy’s stomach. All those times- he’d patted himself on the back, smirked and gone back to the office like the great and good Exterminator that he was, and now? He’s finding out that everything, _everything_ has been for what? For war. For devastation. For innocent people strung into this and killed on _his_ watch.

He’s supposed to keep people safe. That’s why he signed up for this; to turn the tides, to _win._

And all along, it’s been a game to them. An opportunity to pretend to be beaten and laugh at them from the shadows while they went home believing they’d actually _changed_ something.

All at once, Roy understands. Understands Ed’s grim-faced, dry humour, the sarcasm and the endless flashing anger, the shitty apartment, the beat-up combat boots, the deep, intangible sense of _loss_ surrounding him, the haunted look in his eyes when he turns his head and the light catches his irises just so.  
Roy _understands_.  
And it’s not a nice place to be at all.

“So what do we do?” he asks, because for once, he doesn’t have a plan. He doesn’t have a damn _clue_.

He just knows that they’re driving, all of them, without reinforcements or backup because the Director’s stretched their resources too thin trying to cover the whole city; they’re going in _blind_ and Edward Elric is the only one among them who even _vaguely_ knows what kind of danger they’re walking into. Roy knows it’s likely a suicide mission. Knows he won’t come back from this. But they’re going in anyway, all of them; he told the others at the top of those stairs, looked them in the eyes and told them, _no one is going to blame you for walking away from this._ And they’d looked straight back at him and he thought he might burst from how fucking proud he was of them all, when they smiled and nodded and said _yes, Sir, we understand. Are we going, or what?_  
  
 They’re going in because they might have been doing _fuck all_ for the past however-long they’ve been in this goddamn Extermination Squad, but now is their chance to _do something_ , to at long last _actually do something_.

Ed turns his head to look at him, and at that moment they burst out of the sheltered boulevard of sky-high building blocks and apartments stacked atop each other like grimy squares of charcoal and onto the rain-skidded street, and the sunset burst out with them. Fiery red and orange and pink and blinding golden hues silhouetting Ed’s visage like a goddamn angel, albeit an angel with a height complex and a vendetta against the very world he resides in; Ed in the sunset is _brilliant,_ Ed ringed with fire, his edges burnt red and incandescent like a comet arcing through the atmosphere, layers of gas and grit flaring with something akin to an inferno matched only by the furious light in his eyes-  
  
This is it. Roy knows that now. This is _it_.

“They already know we’re coming,” Ed says, and smiles suddenly, wolfish. “So why don’t we just kick down the front door and torch the fuckers?”

 

***

 

 

Ed spins, lips red with blood, dancing out of reach of the fire, and his eyes widen, twenty metres away.

“Roy!” he shouts, and Roy jerks his head around, gun wavering (he’s down to five bullets; come _on,_ Mustang, make them count)  to look him straight in the eyes before a shadow passes in front of him and there are claws digging into his arm, his chest; there’s blood in his eyes, now, and he can’t _see_ -

There is gunfire nearby, the thing latching itself to him jerks and Roy remembers that his team will always, always have his back; he fumbles for the knife and brings it blindly _up_ \- there’s a sickening _shunk_ noise as the blade connects, and then-

There are hands on him, shoving him sideways; the impact as he hits the ground knocks some of the blood out of his eyes and he blinks, looking up, head whirling. Ed is standing in front of him, legs akimbo, hands raised and back strong, and in front of him…  
The other vampire snarls; Ed returns it a thousand times more furious. And then he leaps, a spitting, foul-mouthed amalgamation of martial skill and utter _rage,_ and Roy’s legs buckle.  
 Riza is at his side, hauling him upright; he sways.

The room is ablaze, the walls smouldering and the flames lick at the ceiling. Metal plates keeping it upright, Roy thinks vaguely, and Riza presses a new gun into his hand. Her hair has come loose; she has a gash on one cheek, and her brown eyes glitter as she spins, shooting again and again with perfect accuracy. Vampires fall, mouths full of teeth and helpless anger, and she strides towards them, a vision of terrifying coolness, and reloads smoothly, unconcerned.  
  
Havoc and Breda, armed with gasoline and, when that runs out, lighter fluid, streaked with grime and sporting heavy black eyes, strike matches with an intense kind of wrath, and at their feet, trussed-up vampires hiss and shriek. Roy looks away, swallow against the smell (acrid and awful; he can’t think about it).  
A dark blur jumping from wall to wall; Roy lets his breath out and fires at it, allowing himself a thin smile as it gives a guttural scream and-

Ed leaps at the other vampire and they roll, a tangle of spitting fury and claws and teeth; fire all around them and Roy’s heart clenches-

A flash, a bang, Havoc’s strangled yell, and Roy is flying backwards, slamming against the wall so hard his teeth shake and every cell of his being feels run over by a steamroller; he choked, gasps for air, and dust cloud his lungs.  
The ceiling. The goddamn _ceiling_ is hanging half-collapsed like a bizarrely folded sheet of paper; above them the upstairs room gapes, a bar stool spins in place, teetering on the edge of the hole, and Roy can’t feel anything, his vision spins.

He blacks out. He doesn’t know for how long.

His throat hurts. Every breath aches. His chest feels bound by rubber bands, or perhaps a straightjacket.

The source of the explosion, Roy decides, was the inordinately large amount of gasoline Havoc and Breda rolled in, coupled with the many bottles of alcohol both upstairs and clustered on shelves along the back wall, and, of course, the abundant fire.

Probably should have thought about that before setting everything alight.

He thinks he might be lying against the basement steps; something hard is digging into his lower back.

He blinks. Ah.

There is quite a large piece of glass sticking out of his stomach.

He blinks. Shit

 

“Roy!” Ed is shouting his name and Roy looks up, away from the shard of jagged window-pane piercing his jacket and, judging from the sudden flash of pain when he tries to move, several layers of epidermis. Ed is standing on the other side of the crumbled mound of ceiling lying across half of the basement, and he is surrounded.

He is surrounded by- Roy counts, quickly, eyes widening- eight vampires.

He is surrounded, but he’s not even paying attention to them. His eyes are on Roy’s, and Roy’s alone.

_Ed, you stupid, stupid-_

And then Riza is dragging herself out of the rubble, guns flashing, miraculously unhurt- Roy reckons, later on, that the rubble didn’t dare fall on her; she struck such a strong and fear-inducing figure amidst the clouds of slow-settling dust and flame.

Relief sinks deep into Ed’s face, and he blinks, one long, slow motion, and Roy yells his name, yells _something_ , as he turns, and is dragged under in a storm of claws and fangs and black-clothed monsters.

Falman, darting out from around a corner and tackling a vampire to the ground; Roy’s never seen him do anything like that before and he’s sure he never will again-

Havoc and Breda, emerging from their corner; Havoc’s sleeve is charred and Breda is deathly pale and bleeding from a gash in the forehead, but they survey their kingdom of destruction and high five, shakily. Until they turn, see Roy, teeth clenched and readying himself to tug the glass from his abdomen, and their adrenaline-fueled grins are replaced by horror.

“Sir!”

“Shit! Sir, is that-?”

Scrambling over the rubble towards him, and there’s Feury, hauled upright by Riza and wielding a Taser with skill Roy hadn’t known he possessed, stunning several twitching vampires, still half-buried by floorboards and plaster.

Havoc whistles, low and incredulous, and fumbles for a cigarette that isn’t there.

“Woah- Sir, they got you good.”

“Who’s _they_?” Breda asks, “I’m pretty sure _we_ were the ones who made everything, you know, _boom_.”

“Explode?” Feury provides helpfully. Jean nods.

“That’s the one. Good man, Feury. Sir, we’re sorry, we’ll- get you out of the window, or- something,”

The _window_? Roy manages to raise his head a little, Riza supporting him, and- yes, what he thought was the basement steps was actually an entire window frame, complete with glass. He becomes aware, suddenly, of the myriad of tiny scratches and lacerations on his exposed skin.

“It’s not deep,” Riza says, gently prying Roy’s hands off of the jagged glass shard embedded in his gut, “your jacket took most of it. You may need stitches, but it’s unlikely.” She helps him up, havoc and Breda standing by like the anxious, jittery arsonists they are.

“Sir,” Breda begins, and Roy holds up a hand, wincing as he straightens up. Small bits of glass and other various detritus fall, twinkling, from his uniform, to the floor.

“You killed at least five of them in that explosion,” he says, “Don’t apologise. That’s an order. And so is this: _go help Ed_.”

 

Ed, who is invisible beneath the maelstrom of a vampire fight; Roy steadies himself on the wall and he can’t tear his eyes away from it- there’s no way, _no way_ he can survive that…

He takes one step towards them and his legs go, knees hitting the ground. He grits his teeth.

“Ed,” he gasps out, and Riza takes hold of his arm.

“Sir,” she says, and motions to Havoc and Breda, who dive into the fray, weapons flashing, “you’re injured. You’ll make it worse.”

She’s right, of course, but Roy can’t just _not_ do anything, can he? A vampire shifts beneath the rubble, dragging itself out with splintered claws and a bloody, foaming mouth. Riza shoots it between the eyes, and it smiles even as its eyes go dull. Roy knows it won’t be long before it stands up again.  
It’s a goddamn miracle they’ve survived this long.

Havoc cries out, and Roy can do nothing but watch as he skids across the floor; Riza is distracted by two vampires charging at her at once and Roy aims for the vampires covering Ed but they move too quickly; he can’t get a clear shot; he might hit _Ed-_

Breda follows havoc. Bleeding, they scramble up from the floor, ready to dive in again, and two vampires detach themselves from the group and stalk towards them, slavering.

“There are too many of them!” Feury shouts, back against the wall as a vampire Roy doesn’t recognise slashes at him with ten inch claws. “They heal too fast!”

Riza ducks below a piece of metal, a plate fallen from the ceiling, and spears one of the vampires attacking her with a long shaft of wood. Stake through the heart.

“I’m out of ammunition,” she reports, shoving her gun back in its holster as she wields a broken pipe with an expert kind of skill that makes it look as if she’s been training with it for years. Roy tosses his spare magazine to her; she catches it without looking.

Roy’s ducking, ignoring the pain in his back, his chest, as he dodges a swipe from a vampire that comes out of _nowhere_ ; his gun is out of ammo so he smashes the creature across the face with it instead, knocking it back a few steps, buying himself time to _think_ -

Out of the corner of his eyes, he sees the gently leaking gasoline containers, half empty and peppered with debris, oil trailing over rubble and unconscious vampires alike.

“Havoc, Breda,” he calls over his shoulder, and this is their last chance. “Are you still alive?”

“Sort of!” comes Havoc’s reply, and with his back to them Roy can’t tell their exact situation but if Jean is manging humour then they’re at least in fighting condition.

“Think you can pull off another explosion?” he asks, and there is a brief moment of silence.

 _Let this work,_ he prays, _oh hell,_ please _let this work_.

And- _Ed, I’m sorry._

Is Ed even alive? Roy doesn’t know. He feels sick, and tired, suddenly; his head is heavy and his heart _twists_ \- is Ed even alive? If he is, this could kill him. Roy could be the one to kill him.  
  
 Fire, the only thing that can put a permanent end to a vampire. And he’s planning on flooding a room with it.

He looks into the eyes of the vampire he’s facing, and he thinks, _I have to do this_.  
For the sake of the city. Fo the sake of his team. For the sake of the innocent people out there who have _nothing_ to do with this.  
He has to do this, but that doesn’t mean he wants to.  
Shit.  
Shit.

Behind him, Havoc yells something, and Breda gives a muffled reply. Feury cries out he hits the wall, loses his footing, topples. Riza’s hair flies as she shoots again and again, every bullet hitting its mark, but it’s not _enough_ -

Gasoline, acrid, overpowering.

Roy feints to the left, brings his right foot up to kick the vampire in the side, and spins, ducking under the outstretched arms and _shoves_ , sending the vampire stumbling directly into the oil-soaked haze.

Havoc, his voice wild and shaking, shouts, _“Everyone get the_ fuck _down!”_

The last thing Roy sees before he dives for cover is a glimpse of golden hair through the remaining vampires. Edward.

 

***

The ringing in his ears fades, eventually.

 

***

 

There are hands on his face, patting at his cheeks; desperate hands and other hands, too, gripping his arms and shoulders.

He opens his eyes.

Ed’s face is about a millimetre away from his own.

“He’s _alive_!” someone shouts, Roy thinks it might be Breda.

“That,” says Ed, still mere hair’s-breadths away, “was the _worst_ fucking idea I’ve ever witnessed. Congratulations.”

“It worked, didn’t it?” Roy asks him, or tries, because he manages to get one syllable out, and the rest collapses into a hacking coughing fit. Above him, Riza’s face swims into view. She makes eye contact with him, worry painting her face pale, and he nods at her, cracking a smile. She smiles back, shaking her head, and the relief in her eyes is palpable.

“Havoc, Breda, Falman,” she calls, “Check the vampires. Tie up any of the ones who aren’t dead; we’ll take them back with us. Feury, get outside and call Headquarters. See if they have anyone to spare yet. We’re going to need a few cars.”

Roy goes to struggle upright, and Ed forces him back down. He’s half on top of him, like, this, and Roy realises that he’s bleeding, in numerous places. His fangs glint. His lip is split, and his cheekbone is shadowed with a dark bruise, fading lighter even as Roy watches.

“Don’t move, you dumbass,” he snaps, “you’re gonna hurt yourself even more. We don’t even know if you’re concussed or what.”

“I appreciate you concern, Ed,” Roy wheezes, “but you’re crushing my lungs. Just- help me up. Please.”

Ed pauses. “Oh. Right. Sorry.”

The pressure alleviates some, and Ed hauls Roy into a sitting positon, rougher than Roy had expected. He coughs again when he’s upright, eyes watering, and Ed pounds him enthusiastically on the back.

Then he straightens, and they just look at each other for a long moment.

He’s alive. Ed’s _alive_ \- but he’s holding himself strangely, and Roy realises with a jolt that a large area of Ed’s shirt is charred and burnt. Fire, the only thing that can put an end to a vampire permanently.

“You-,” Roy starts, but Ed is grabbing him and kissing him without warning; their teeth clash and Roy gasps for air, and Ed tastes of metal and salt and desperation. He draws back, gulping, and- out of the blue, whacks Roy in the chest with the fat of his hands.  
The air leaves his lungs with a _whoosh_.

“You fucker- I thought you were _dead_!” Ed’s eyes are furious and worried and large and gold, and Roy is coughing trying to force air back into his lungs.

“I- thought _you_ were dead!” Roy protests, massaging his chest with one hand. That had _hurt_.

Ed stares at him as if he’s gone mad. “What the- fuck you, why would _I_ be dead? _You’re_ the one who got thrown through a fucking window!”

So he’d seen that. “You were cornered by eight of them, Ed! I thought- even _you_ -,”

“Yeah, well,” says Ed, dust in his hair and an angry, painful-looking burn on his abdomen, tossing his head, “I’m a badass. Didn’t you know?”

 

And Roy laughs, helpless, leans his head into Ed’s shoulder.

  
“I had my suspicions,” he says, and pulls back, searching Ed’s face for injury. He’s bruised, scraped- but then again, _vampire_ ; his wounds are already healing. Still, the burn; it’s large and though the edges are starting to heal over, Roy can hardly bear to _look_ at it. He fingers the ragged edges of Ed’s shirt, and he grins.  
And Roy is so, so unbelievably exasperated with him that he can do nothing except pull him into a hug, burying his face in the crook of Ed’s neck and holding on for dear life.

“Roy.” He lets go, takes a small step back. Ed. Right in front of him; so close their noses almost brush; he leans in, bangs swinging forward to caress the sides of Roy’s face; gently, they kiss.  
 Carefully, Ed’s fingers stroke the skin around the gashes on Roy’s face, eyes warm gold and melting.

“Ed,” Roy returns, raises his hand to press his fingers to Ed’s cheek; he leans into the touch. “Are they-?”

“They’re dead,” Ed promises, eyes tightening. He pulls back a little to glances over his shoulder; Roy follows his gaze to the identical fires. Ed grins a little, one hand moving to press against his stomach, along the top edge of the burn. “Good thing you found out that fire does bad shit to vampires, huh?”

“Don’t even joke about that,” Roy says, hushed, “God, Ed. Don’t even joke about that.”

Ed’s eyes soften, he leans in again to kiss Roy tender, lingeringly. “Yeah. You okay?”

Roy smiles at him then, wincing as the movement tugs on his wounds. “I am now.”

And he is.

***

“I refuse to let you leave broken glass all over the floor, Edward.”

Roy leans into the cupboard, wrinkling his nose at the utter _desecration_ he finds there, and pulls a broom free of a thick grey tangle of cobweb.

Ed groans loudly from where Roy knows he is lying on his stomach on the couch. “Are you fucking kidding me?”

“No,” Roy says, moving back into the other room, brandishing the broom, “I’m not.” He eyes the window, the cluttered shards of glass; Ed’s done nothing except tape a sheet over the gap and kick the pieces of the window pane into a lopsided pile.

He looks up, glaring at Roy balefully from his position on the couch. “Why are you cleaning up? Just _leave_ it, Roy.”

His eyes say, _come here and cuddle with me,_ but Roy has learned to steel himself against Ed’s distractions.

Sort of.

He kisses Ed as he passes, lingering t a little too long, and tears himself away, heading purposefully towards the mess.

“You can’t just leave this all over the floor,” he says, “someone could get hurt.”

Ed groans again, louder, and thuds his forehead against the arm of the couch. “What the _fuck_ , Roy?” he moans, “ _Who_ , exactly, is gonna get hurt. Just- stay away from that area, or something. Jeez.”

Roy ignores him, and starts sweeping. Eventually, Ed joins him, because Ed can’t bear to be without stimulation for a long time, and Ed is bored.

“This sucks,” he informs Roy, one arm around Roy’s waist as he holds the bin-bag open for Roy to tip the glass into, and Roy smiles and kisses the tip of his nose.

“Safety doesn’t suck,” he says, and Ed rolls his eyes so hard, for a moment Roy is afraid they’re going to fall out.

“ _Does so_ ,” Ed mutters, but he opens the bag a little wider. “You missed a bit. Next to the wall.”

This isn’t what Roy dreamed of when he thought about domestic bliss, but it’s the closest he’s ever going to get, with Ed- and somehow, that’s more than enough.

 

And then there’s the knock at the door. Ed pauses, glancing up at Roy. His eyes flash, and Roy can _see_ the thought process: enemy or friend, Ed is readying himself for a fight. A week after the Extermination Unit finally finished clearing up various skirmishes all over the city; a week after Roy was promoted to captain of the entire citywide branch; a week after they destroyed what later turned out to be the _base of operations_ for the vampire hordes intending to take over the city…a week after all that, and _everyone_ is jumpy.  
It’s just that Ed’s been jumpy for longer than any of them, and old habits are damn hard to shake.

 

“Brother?”

There is a single, brief fraction of a second where Ed, eyes still fixed on Roy’s, goes perfectly, perfectly still.

And then he’s gone, like lighting, like a shot, like every simile for _damn fast_ there exists, and Roy follows, after a shocked pause.  
There’s only one person it could be, and it’s confirmed when Ed yanks the door open, breathless, after leaping over the couch, in such a rush that he forgot to shout ‘ _parkour!’_ as he usually does, and Roy stumbles after him.

In the doorway, stands…well. Ed’s brother, Roy supposes, from the way Ed stares at him for a long, long moment, and then grabs him into a violent hug.

“ _Al_!” he shrieks, and Al raises an arm to pat Ed clumsily on the back.

“Brother,” he says, and he’s smiling; Roy takes him: his hair shorter but still the same wheat-blond shade, he stands taller than Ed despite the numerous times Ed’s referred to him as the younger brother, and Roy can only assume that Al was the one who inherited the height genes in the family. His piercing eyes are the same, too; gold through and through, and his smile, though calmer, holds behind it the same terrifying intensity that Roy has become accustomed to from Ed.  


“Brother,” Al says again, dropping his bags inside the door and moving in, shutting the door behind him even as Ed refuses to let him go, “I think I’ve found it.”

There is a long pause. Ed draws back, and though Roy can’t see him, he knows from the way he tilts his head that Ed is narrowing his eyes.

“…Found what?” he asks.

Al breaks into a grin, eyes blazing with the fire that Roy sees occasionally in Ed’s, reserved for particularly challenging fights or a long book, and grips Ed’s shoulders. “The _cure_ ,” he says.

Unconsciously, Roy takes a sharp breath. His hand flickers to his throat. The cure. The _cure_.

Ed goes very, very still.

Al nods, eyes searching Ed’s face, still grinning ferociously.

“Are you sure”? Ed asks, finally, voice a whisper. It’s so quiet.

“Yes. _Yes_. I’m sure. I’m _so_ sure, brother, this is it. This is what we’ve been searching for.”

Ed turns, quickly, to look at Roy over his shoulder. Their eyes meet, and Roy can barely _think_ \- The _cure_! He’s sure his expression is a mixture of shock and slow elation and _holy shit, the_ cure _, this could save millions of people_ , and Ed seems to find something he can hold onto in that, because his eyes go steady.

“Shit,” he says wonderingly, and yanks Al into another bone-crushing hug. “ _Shit_ , Al, you fucking _genius_ \- you- You _fucking_ genius. My little brother, saviour of the world. _Fucking_ hell.”

Al gives a muffled laugh, one hand fisted in the back of Ed’s shirt. Then he raises his head, and looks Roy straight in the eyes.

It’s a look that Roy usually associates with Riza, after she catches him sneaking paperwork into the wastepaper basket or drinking more than the five cups of coffee per day. It freezes him down to the bone. The sunny grin is gone. The fire remains. He swallows.

“So,” Al says, “Who’s this?”

 

 

 

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> my [tumblr](http://www.kattobinguwu.tumblr.com) now has a [fic tag](http://www.kattobinguwu.tumblr.com/tagged/fic%20tag) where u can see me whine about how difficult writing is and get an idea of when i will be uploading next, since it's usually just a mess of sporadic and unscheduled posting lmao


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